Biographies of the Digital

This two-day symposium convenes an interdisciplinary group of scholars to examine, rekindle, and expand biography as a vital method in studies of design and technology.

Through presentations, moderated discussions, oral histories, and archival workshops, we will collectively consider questions such as: How can methods, sensibilities, and intuitions from biography inform how we examine actors, events, and effects of digital technology development and use in design and creative fields? What is the role of the personal archive in writing such histories? If we move beyond celebrating the “lives of great men,” “inventors,” or “architect-auteurs,” how can we employ biographic approaches in research and writing to foreground gender and disability perspectives, or reveal hidden voices in the archives? What might biography mean as archives themselves become reconfigured as and through data, and as the line between the human and artificial systems becomes increasingly blurred and contested? 

The event is free and open to the public.

DAY 1: Thursday, 7 May 2026 ----

Shaughnessy House, Canadian Centre for Architecture

 

9:30 – 9:45 Welcome and Opening Remarks

 

I. TROPES

Moderator and respondent: Peter Sealy, University of Toronto

9:45 – 10:00 Introductions

10:00 – 10:20 Mark Hayward (York University) “Radar, Ratings and the Commercialization of Real-Time Information”

10:20 – 10:40 Giulia Boller (ETH) “Building Models in the Computer: Structural Design Processes Between Analogue and Digital”

10:40 – 11:00  Ultan Byrne (University of Toronto)  “Epistolic Architecture: Networks of Authorship and Correspondence in the Design of U.S. Federal Buildings, 1852-1939”

11:00 – 11:20 Break

11:20 –12:00 Roundtable Discussion

 

II. THINGS

Moderator and respondent: Claire Zimmerman, University of Toronto

13:00 – 13:15  Introductions

13:15 – 13.35 Matthew Hunter (McGill University) “The Heart of the Andes Insurance: Biography of a Corporate Melodrama”

13:35 – 13:55 Albena Yaneva (Politecnico di Torino) [on zoom]  “Living Archives: Stories of Design and the Rethinking of Historicity”

13:55 – 14:15  Daniel Cardoso Llach (Carnegie Mellon University) “n-graphies”

14:15 – 14.35 Break

14:35 – 15:15 Roundtable Discussion

 

III. AGENTS

Moderator and respondent: David Theodore, McGill University

15:30 – 15:45  Introductions

15:45 – 16:05 Evangelos Kotsioris (MoMA) “Inventing “Construction Cybernetics’ Dmitry N. Yablonsky and the Retooling of Architectural Practice in Kiev, 1970–77”

16:05 – 16:25  Andrew Witt (Washington University in St.Louis)  “Mapping the Chronofile: The Data Visualization of Biography”

16:25 – 16:45 Anna-Maria Meister (KIT, Max Planck Institute)  “What if An Archive Forgets What it Is?”

16:45 – 17:05 Break

17:05 – 17:45 Roundtable Discussion

 

PUBLIC KEYNOTE

18:00 – 19:30    Eden Medina (MIT) “Assembling Stories of the Disappeared: From Documents to Data” (part of the CCA Public Programming)

DAY 2: Friday, 8 May 2026 ----

Shaughnessy House and Study Room, Canadian Centre for Architecture

 

OPENING KEYNOTE

9:30 –10:30 Mara Mills (NYU)

 

CONVERSATIONS

11:00 – 11:45  Chris Yessios (Ohio State University) in conversation with Eliza Pertigkiozoglou (McGill University)

11:45 – 12:15  Break

12:15 – 13:00  Bernard Cache (EPFL) in conversation with Emma Larcelet (EPFL)

 

EVIDENCE (Study Room)

14:00 –15:15  Show & Tell: Lionel March Fonds, Part A: Philip Steadman (UCL) and Part B: George Stiny (MIT) in conversation with Theodora Vardouli

15:15 – 15:30 Break

15:30 – 16:15  Show & Tell – “Architecture and its Image” (1989), Eve Blau (Harvard University) in conversation with Matthew Allen

Biographies of the Digital is made possible by generous support from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada, the Peter Guo-hua School of Architecture, McGill University, the Research Group on Democracy, Space, and Technology at the Yan P. Lin Centre, McGill University, the Sam Fox School of Design and Visual Arts, Washington University in St. Louis, and the Canadian Centre for Architecture.

Graphic design by House9

Biographies of the Digital